Self-guided walk · Hobart
The Hobart historic pub walk is a self-guided route of 2.38 km between 5 old pubs, about 32 min walking, with a GPX file to follow. Hope and Anchor Tavern makes the oldest claim on it, 1807; the oldest record on the walk belongs to Central Hotel, from 1818.
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The distance is the walked street route, not the straight line. These are history walks, not a drinking challenge: take it slowly, drink water between stops, and leave a pub out if the day is getting long.
Hobart’s oldest pubs, Murray Street to Battery Point. Five houses between Murray Street and Battery Point, claiming 1862, 1818, 1807 and 1846 twice over. Hobart is a place where the licences are better recorded than the walls: two of these years come out of the colony's records and three come from the houses themselves. The last stop is a kilometre from the first.
34 Murray Street, Hobart, Tasmania
A four-storey hotel in the middle of Hobart, with oriel windows and iron balconies and a bar hung with contemporary Tasmanian art. The house dates itself to 1862 and Webb's Family Hotel; the Hadleys bought it in 1890 and left their name on it. Roald Amundsen stayed in 1912 after the South Pole. The Art Bar opens at four, whether or not you have a room.
250 m to stop 2 · about 3 min
73 Collins Street, Hobart TAS
A Collins Street pub whose licence goes back to Hobart's first handful of public houses, granted as the New Inn in 1818 and soon renamed the Ship. In 1882 the original corner building gave way to a bank and the business moved next door into its own billiard room. Today it's a modern bar with rooms upstairs.
400 m to stop 3 · about 5 min
65 Macquarie Street at Market Place, Hobart TAS 7000
A Georgian tavern on Macquarie Street that stakes the boldest claim in Australian drinking history: a public house on the Hobart Rivulet since 1807. Its dark rooms are crammed with antiques and maritime relics, and seafood and burgers come out of the kitchen. A local brewery took over the lease in 2025, but guest taps and Guinness still pour.
770 m to stop 4 · about 10 min
1 Murray Street, Hobart TAS 7000
A sandstone waterfront hotel facing Hobart's old Custom House, now Parliament House, from which it takes its name. Built for early settler Charles Gaylor, whose name is still cut into the coping stone, it once served hearty meals as the 'Chop House'. Its Derwent Bar still has live music at weekends, and there are rooms upstairs.
970 m to stop 5 · about 13 min
29 Trumpeter Street, Battery Point, Hobart TAS
Battery Point's corner local, known to regulars as 'Shippies', has claimed to serve the old maritime quarter since 1846. It sits among the colonial cottages a short stroll from Salamanca, with water and mountain views. The bar pours Tasmanian beer, cider and wine, the kitchen leans on local seafood, and nine guest rooms sit upstairs.
Hobart’s oldest claims turn on licences rather than buildings, and two of them can be dated.
The Hope and Anchor on Macquarie Street claims a public house on this ground since 1807, and calls itself the oldest pub in Australia. The evidence for the year is a line in Robert Knopwood’s diary for 25 July 1807, recording Hopkins opening a public house at the Sign of the Whale Fishery, and the ABC has reported doubt about whether that house stood on this site. The premises went on the Tasmanian Heritage Register in 1998 for their archaeological importance. The rival is the Bush Inn at New Norfolk, and the argument between them is set out at Australia’s oldest pub.
The Central Hotel has the better record, if not the older date: a licence granted to Thomas L. Richardson on 3 October 1818 for the New Inn, known as the Ship Inn by 1821 and one of Hobart’s first fifteen licensed houses. The business has moved since. The corner building went in 1882 to make way for a bank and trade shifted next door into the inn’s own billiard room, rebuilt in 1923, while the heritage register reads the standing house as Old Colonial Georgian behind a Federation front of about 1900.
The Customs House Hotel and the Shipwrights Arms both say 1846, and both dates are their own. The Customs House was built for the settler Charles Gaylor and traded first as the Chop House; the register describes its sandstone corner, its recessed entry and its twelve-paned sashes without dating any of them. The Shipwrights Arms was put up in 1845 and licensed by May 1846, and its telephone number ends in the year.
Hadley’s Orient makes the youngest claim and carries two dates. The hotel says it was founded as Webb’s Family Hotel in 1862; the line repeated by the state tourism service and the booking sites, that it was built by convict labour in 1834, is not supported by the heritage register, which calls the building a rare surviving large-scale nineteenth-century accommodation house. Roald Amundsen stayed here in 1912 and telegraphed the news of the South Pole from Hobart.
The city’s houses are listed at the oldest pubs in Hobart and the state’s at the oldest pubs in Tasmania.
